In the Dark of Days
by moonswirl
Summary: Gleekathon, day 1489: Still trapped in a world that confuses him, Mike decides to do something, even if it means keeping it a secret from the others like him. - Berry-St series


_Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 70th cycle. Now cycle 71!_

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**"In the Dark of Days"  
In Gen2!World: Gen1!Mike, Gen2!Puck  
Berry-St series  
_(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)_  
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Ever since he had landed in this world and found out what had happened to his friends, Mike had wanted to talk to Puck. No, more than want, he needed to talk to him. He knew he couldn't fix what had happened, with the other Mike, and their Matt, and he didn't know what would happen when he did go to him, but he owed them all that much, those three boys who had never deserved this happening to them. He owed them to be a friend to one of their own, a good friend. If Puck resisted him, he was just going to have to try harder.

He'd been struggling to get used to the prosthetic. He still had nightmares, each night he had to spend in this world, because as much as he would dream of being whole, he would wake again and discover his missing limb. All he wanted was to be able to go about trying to get them all back home, same as the others like him did, without feeling constantly the place where his real leg ended and the fake one began. He was doing his best to try and walk steady, to not use objects and people to keep himself balanced, but there was only so much he could do. He wasn't going to use a cane or a crutch. There might have been one back at his house, but he wasn't going to go there, not unless he had no choice.

The fact that he wasn't as fast as he'd want though would mean that if he tried to approach someone and they didn't want to be approached, they had time to get away. He was fully expecting that from Puck, but then he had found him sitting in the cafeteria and he was so lost in his own thoughts that he never saw Mike coming until he was at the table.

"Mind if I sit?" he asked. Puck had heard him, knew it was him, but he didn't look up from the lines he'd been tracing in the bottom of his lunch trey with his fork. When he heard Mike's voice, his hand trembled, just for a moment, and then he continued the repeated motion. He never gave consent, but he didn't say anything to the contrary either. So Mike sat down. "We haven't exactly talked… We haven't talked, at all, these past few weeks," he corrected himself. "And I don't know if it was like that before, or…"

He knew what the others had told him, and he understood. But tried as he did to remember what they'd said, he would look at his friend's face, his entire posture, and he couldn't help it.

"Puck, I don't belong here, I'm not who you think I am."

"Who's that?" Puck asked flatly, like he was only half listening.

"It's complicated, but… I am Mike Chang, and I do go to McKinley, and I am your friend," he stated these truths." He caught Puck giving him a slight look, probably asking himself – and rightly so – how that made him 'not who he thought he was.' "But I was never in a car accident. I never lost a leg… or a friend." Now Puck's hand stopped, and he looked up. He looked like he wanted to hit someone, and if Mike wasn't careful, it would be him. "I realize how that sounds, but you have to believe me. I come from this other version of our lives, and I was thrown in here by accident, or… I don't know how ex…"

He didn't get to finish. Puck had gotten up and walked away and, as he'd reminded himself earlier, he was no good at chases.

For the rest of the day, he didn't know what to do. He couldn't tell the others that he had broken their agreement and told someone and, worse than that, this person had walked away before he could ask them not to say anything. He kept it to himself, hoping he might come up with an idea to fix this problem.

And then the fix came to him. He was back home, after the day was done, when there was a ring at the door, and his mother escorted Puck into his room. He had never seen his mother in the same room as the boy who'd been driving when her son had nearly died and lost his leg, and Mike could tell as much as she knew the accident had not been entirely his fault, she couldn't keep from blaming him part of the way.

After she was gone, Puck stood for a while before going to sit on Mike's desk chair and turning to face him where he sat on the bed.

"Is it really true, what you said?" Puck slowly asked.

"Yes," Mike told him.

"Does anybody else know?"

"My mother. And the others." At Puck's look, he sighed. "Kurt, and Quinn, and Jesse…"

"What, the new janitor?"

"Yes. In the other place, where we're from, he's someone else, he's in Glee Club with us."

"Glee Club?" Puck actually chuckled. "You're in Glee Club? There's a Glee Club?"

"Yes. You're in it, too," Mike told him, and Puck gave a clumsy half laugh, like he hadn't laughed properly in a while. "Matt's in it, too," he went on, and now the laughter died down.

"He's alive," Puck bowed his head.

"I told you, there was no accident. I still have my leg, and he's alive." He could see Puck trying to hide it, but the boy with the Mohawk had eyes red with tears.

"I never…" he started, and his voice was going to show the emotions roiling through him whether he liked it or not. "I never talk about it, to anyone. My mother's wanted me to go to a shrink, but there's no way I'm going to go and talk to some head case who just sits there so he can charge us money we don't have to begin with. I won't put that on her on top of everything," he barely had a hold of his anger, and there was a moment of silence.

"You can talk to me," Mike told him, and Puck looked up, just barely hoping. "I know I'm not the same Mike you knew, but I am your friend, and I will always be that, in any reality." Puck said nothing, but he was nodding to himself. "So does that mean you believe me?"

"It sounds nuts," Puck told him.

"Try living it."

"But I know you wouldn't mess with me like that if it wasn't real." He did believe him, and Mike was confident he wouldn't tell a soul. As much as Mike had needed to talk to him, he now saw just how much Puck needed it right back.

THE END

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******A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.  
****In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are  
************always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!**


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